BWH Patient Safety Culture Survey Begins Oct. 22

Betsy Nabel presents on the importance of transparency at a recent Safety Matters Quality Rounds.

Fostering a culture of patient safety and transparency is critical to BWH's mission of delivering the highest-quality patient care. Next week, staff and employees whose work directly impacts patient care will have an opportunity to provide their feedback about these topics in the BWH Patient Safety Culture Survey.

"By completing the survey, you will help us make BWH the safest possible place not only for our current patients and staff, but also for the next generation of health care professionals and patients who come through the doors of the Brigham," said BWH President Betsy Nabel, MD. "I urge you to take a few minutes to share your valuable perspective."

Staff will receive an e-mail from PascalMetrics@jangomail.com on Monday, Oct. 22, with a link to the survey. Paper surveys will be provided to departments that require them.

iPads, Parking
and Gift Cards!
Everyone who completes the
survey will be entered into
drawings for prizes, including
10 iPads, five one-month parking spots at BWH and
more than 150 American Express and Amazon gift cards.

All responses will remain confidential. Though some questions will be specific to your work unit, to ensure no employee can be identified by his or her answers, hospital leadership will not receive any individual responses. They will be provided a report that summarizes overall patterns of responses.

"We need and want your input so that we can improve and make changes to build a safer environment for our staff and patients," said Associate Chief Quality Officer Allen Kachalia, MD. "The survey results will help us design future initiatives that improve safety and ensure employees feel comfortable reporting errors and speaking up when something doesn't seem right."

Nabel emphasized the hospital's commitment to patient safety and transparency during her presentation at the Oct. 11 Safety Matters Quality Rounds.

"Transparency helps us improve the delivery of care, fosters trusting relationships and enables us to support the second victims of medical errors-the care providers," said Nabel. "It's important to me that everyone knows they will be supported in reporting errors; it is the only way we can learn from them and prevent them from happening again. We owe that to our patients and to each other."